1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a heat-dissipating apparatus for a vehicle lamp apparatus, which can cool the lamp apparatus more efficiently and easily couple or decouple the cooling fan to/from the light emitting diode (LED) housing of the vehicle lamp apparatus.
2. Related Art
A vehicle is equipped with vehicle lamps. Vehicle lamps have lighting function and signaling function, among others. That is, vehicle lamps enable the driver of the vehicle to easily detect objects around and ahead of the vehicle while driving at night or in a dark area. They also inform other vehicles and road users of the vehicle's driving state. For example, a headlamp and a fog lamp are designed for the lighting function, and a direction indicator, a taillight, a brake light, and a side marker are designed for the signaling function. Typically, halogen lamps and high intensity discharge (HID) lamps are used as a light source.
Recently, LEDs were adopted as a light source for vehicle headlamps or lighting devices. The color temperature of LEDs is approximately 5500 kelvin (K) which is close to sunlight. Thus, LEDs cause less eyestrain than other light sources. Since LEDs are small-sized, lamps using LEDs can be designed with a greater degree of freedom. In addition, LEDs are economical since they are semi-permanent. In this regard, LEDs are being introduced to reduce complexity in the configuration of lamps and prevent an increase in the number of processes required to manufacture the lamps. That is, attempts are being made to extend the life of lamps and reduce the space occupied by lamp apparatuses by taking advantage of properties of LEDs.
However, temperature remains a major challenge in the adoption of LEDs as a light source for vehicle lamps. As the performance of LEDs improves, the LEDs emit heat at higher temperatures, and the heat at higher temperatures reduces the performance of the LEDs. That is, as the temperature of LEDs increases, the luminous efficiency thereof significantly deteriorates. To address this problem, the junction temperature of LEDs must be increased, or a heat-dissipating apparatus for lowering the ambient temperature must be installed. In particular, since there is a limit to increasing the junction temperature, the heat-dissipating apparatus must be used efficiently. Although the junction temperature of LEDs is expected to increase continuously, an improved heat-dissipating apparatus is essential to increase the efficiency of a lamp more effectively.
FIG. 1 is a schematic perspective view of a conventional LED heat-dissipating apparatus 10. Referring to FIG. 1, the conventional LED heat-dissipating apparatus 10 includes an LED 11, an LED-mounting block 12, a heat sink 13, a cooling fan 14, a dust cover 15, and a housing 16.
In the conventional LED heat-dissipating apparatus 10, the heat sink 13 is installed under the LED-mounting block 12 having the LED 11 mounted thereon and thus dissipates heat emitted from the LED 11. However, it is not easy to efficiently dissipate all heat from the LED 11 by using the heat sink 13 alone.
For this reason, the cooling fan 14 is used. The cooling fan 14 is installed near the LED 11 and brings air in from outside to cool the LED 11. However, it is difficult to separately couple or decouple the dust cover 15 and the cooling fan 14 to/from the housing 16. In addition, it requires additional costs and a large space to separately couple the dust cover 15 and the cooling fan 14 to the housing 16.
Therefore, there is a need for a heat-dissipating apparatus which can efficiently dissipate heat emitted from the LED 11 and can be easily assembled or dismantled.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.